


the first because

by manhattan



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Byleth Keeps Dying, Character Study, Edelgard Should Know Better, F/F, Female My Unit | Byleth, Love/Hate, Moral Ambiguity, New Game+, Repetition, Revenge, Spoilers, Time Loop, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29801289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manhattan/pseuds/manhattan
Summary: If I could, Byleth thinks,watching Edelgard first, then her father, standing there laughing and alive, warm-blooded and well in spite of what Edelgard will bring—if I could, I would have let him kill you."It's no problem," Byleth lies, instead.The difference between love and hate is sometimes paper-thin.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, My Unit | Byleth & Sothis
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48





	the first because

**Author's Note:**

> after a long period of relatively gentle fics, i have succumbed and gone back to my needlessly, violently dramatic roots. the pacing is a bit off and could have probably been refined but i am an impatient person and i have almost no regrets about being self-indulgent :^) please enjoy!

The first time, well, it is over Edelgard. Not because, which is a distinction which should be made clear and apparent; no, Byleth's first death is _over_ a girl barely made young woman, whose eyes widen with fear when the blade of an axe swings far too close for comfort. The because will come, eventually, many times, but the over, that brilliant and sickening overture, is a well-meaning and foolishly innocent gesture.

Also, it doesn't happen, not really, but it could have, and that possibility alone dictates the meaning of the action.

The second time, that first _because_ , Edelgard's eyes are bright, and she is swathed in different reds, one of them luxurious and soft, another already dried and browning, and Byleth dies kneeling under the considerable weight of Adrestian betrayal.

Byleth has to give Edelgard some credit: she looks as distraught as Byleth feels.

* * *

Byleth wakes up in that dark place again, and her throat is closed, perfect. Sothis yawns through her surprise, then settles her chin on her hand.

"Why, isn't this familiar, Professor?" says the goddess, formed anew and glowing atop her throne. Her smile is forlorn, softened by the harsh events they've both lived through—or have yet to live? "You really are a stubborn one."

"Sothis," Byleth says, somehow, all relief and longing through her anger. "It's good to see you again."

The goddess's smile deepens, but then she shakes her head, and her expression turns grave.

"You are not supposed to die, you know," Sothis replies, one leg swaying up and down. "I thought we had gone over this already."

"Would it help if I said I didn't mean to?" Byleth replies in turn, bolstered by the sight of someone she thought she'd lost for good.

"No," Sothis says, a murmur echoing across the in-between they find themselves in. "No, my friend. It will not help."

The surrounding mist encroaches, darkening. It feels almost exactly like going to sleep.

* * *

Byleth is at the village's border. The air tastes of morning dew and humble fireplaces, and her father's hand falls on her shoulder, congratulating her on a job well done.

Her _father_ —

Byleth grasps him by the hand, and perhaps it is bile that rises up her throat, or perhaps it is a mass of bitter tears. She forces it down with the help of her pressed lips, a hard swallow, and if Jeralt wonders at her touch, usually so rare and nimble, he does not show it. Perhaps because there are more important matters to attend to, such as the bandit who sinks his axe into Edelgard's unarmored chest.

 _Oh_ , Byleth thinks, still nauseated from the journey, or the axe, or her own death, _of course_ —

* * *

Byleth is at the village's border. The air tastes of morning dew and humble fireplaces, and Jeralt touches at her shoulder in congratulation. Byleth spins on an unsteady heel, mouth dry and foul-tasting, and the chief of the bandits dies before he ever gets the chance to get up from the ground, her blade shoved right down the space between his collarbones.

His gasp mirrors Edelgard's, before: wet, wheezing, and pathetic. Surprised, too, since neither of them have ever expected to die this soon, or at all. The crack of his sternum feels like an exclamation point.

It is a gruesome enough sight that not one of the three House leaders find the words they would have said, otherwise. Claude questions her father instead of her, chatting amiably and slyly about the school and the knights. Dimitri looks at the body, quiet and dark, and only snaps out of it once Alois drags him away. And Edelgard stands frozen in place, wide eyes searching Byleth's.

"Thank you," Edelgard says, finally having decided.

 _If I could,_ Byleth thinks, watching Edelgard first, then her father, standing there laughing and alive, warm-blooded and well in spite of what Edelgard will bring— _if I could_ , _I would have let him kill you_.

"It's no problem," Byleth lies, instead.

Sothis remains silent, but her worry is palpable through the link of their souls.

* * *

She chooses the Black Eagles, of course. Then she makes her way to the library and introduces her sword to the space in-between Solon's ribs. How it slides so effortlessly, and how his blood glows a lovely warm-red under the library lights.

He manages to look shocked before he slumps over, his final gasp like a question.

"For my father," Byleth whispers in his ear, over the screams of the students and the monks, and wakes up in that dark place again.

Sothis seems unimpressed, before the mist blurs her expression.

* * *

She chooses the Black Eagles, of course. Keep your enemies closer, and all that. Byleth is both a tactician and a swords-master; she knows how to kill brilliantly. Even more now that she knows that some things do not deserve to live.

She avoids Solon, and chooses to trail after Edelgard, this time.

"My teacher," Edelgard had said, the first time, all the time, before Byleth had been incapable of turning against the church.

"Professor," Edelgard says, this time, and the suspicion she tries to hide is never packed away neatly enough. Whatever she has seen, whatever Hubert has told her about Byleth, it has changed everything about the way she perceives Byleth.

Byleth should probably care more than she does. But then, if Edelgard relies on people like Hubert, and Jeritza, and _Kronya_ , well, she likely believes she can handle all of her weapons, no matter how sharp. She will not waste the chance to add a goddess's sword to her armory.

And Byleth is so angry, still. She does so well in battle, these days.

"Yes, Edelgard," Byleth replies, closing her book. "Can I help you with something?"

They study battalion formations together, and Byleth instructs Edelgard on how to take them apart by surprise. Edelgard smells of subtle perfume, something light and fruity and airy, something Byleth has never smelled on her, and later, at dinner, Byleth has two portions of peach sorbet.

Edelgard sits in front of her, invited or arrested, and, at her side, Hubert watches in silence. Whether or not they sense a threat is up to them; whether or not Byleth makes it more obvious, too.

Neither of them have much of an appetite. Byleth finishes both their portions, and licks her teeth when she's done.

* * *

"She does not trust you, you know," Sothis says, one late afternoon, once Byleth has shut the door to her room and exhaled her worries and exhaustion away.

Byleth wishes she could laugh, but she is too tired. Her father—his eyes, growing dim under the overcast sky—it will happen soon. She watches him constantly, these days, halving her limited free time between her students and her father's office. She watches him constantly, and she is tired all the time.

"I don't think it matters," Byleth says, and she is wrong, because Edelgard is no fool.

Time goes on, and Edelgard vanishes alongside Flayn. Hubert plays his part well, looking worried and angry in equal turns, but Byleth's skepticism does not buy his performance. The search is the same, long-winded and tiring, all that running through damp stone corridors and musty rooms taking its toll on her frightened team. They do not have the benefit of knowing, and they fear for Edelgard and Flayn's well-being.

Bernadetta dissolves into nervous tears when they find Flayn, alone, and Byleth's fury at the empty space beside her, where the murderous impostor should be, oh, it— it consumes Byleth, until her palms crackle whitely with her vampiric spells, until she is biting the side of her cheek bloody.

"Professor," Ferdinand mutters, watching her. He is polite enough to keep his voice level: a warning at her lack of composure, meant for her ears alone. "Professor, we'll find her in time, I'm sure of it."

"You were right," Byleth tells Sothis, while Ferdinand nods uncertainly, frowning in confusion at the wrong tense. Hubert's eyes tighten at the corners, and the fire inside them is directed at Byleth.

Sothis does not reply, not even to gloat. Is is indifference or concern, and does it even matter, if it won't help Byleth accomplish what she's set out to do?

She returns to the start, instead, and she lets Jeritza kill her, reacting too late to the push of his lance. It hurts, Sothis, it _hurts_ , that cursed metal running across her lung like an icy hand. At least Edelgard killed without inflicting physical pain, she thinks, before grabbing the blade and frying the both of them with a white arc of cruel energy.

His dying yell rings in her ears until Byleth wakes up in that dark place again.

Sothis turns her face away, but not before Byleth spots the turmoil in her green eyes.

* * *

Byleth is at the village's border. The air tastes of morning dew and humble fireplaces, and Jeralt touches at her shoulder in congratulation.

She plays her part as well as she can, letting the assailants run with their tails between their legs instead of letting her emotions overtake her. She isn't sure how that alone will ease Edelgard's suspicions, because Byleth's body still burns when Edelgard comes close, that hot exertion of pretending to be someone she is no longer. She wonders whether Edelgard's does, too, and if the others can feel it, the upcoming snap that bends and bends between them.

Still, Byleth waits, even though it's hard, even though Sothis retracts more and more, even though Jeralt frowns when he thinks Byleth isn't looking. Still.

"My teacher," Edelgard says, eventually, and it's the most lovely thing Byleth has ever been called.

She only realizes she is smiling when Edelgard's pale face flushes, a marvel of capillary traffic, all of its blood rushing because of Byleth's mouth.

 _Oh,_ Byleth thinks, and her tongue flattens against her bared teeth.

* * *

"For how much longer are you going to do this?" Sothis asks, one early morning.

Byleth pauses, hands latching the buckle of her vest, and turns to look at the goddess hovering between the decorations on the shelf. A wilting flower, given one afternoon by Mercedes, who had gone picking them with Annette; a sketch, pinned open and unrolled by metal weights, a coincidental gift from Ignatz; a pair of hunting gloves, silky-smooth and dark, lined with rabbit's fur after Petra misunderstood a conversation.

Byleth thinks of Edelgard's eyes, glowing brilliantly amid that first fire, that first because, of a wax-sealed letter and an armband given to her on her birthday, and continuously attempts to remove the meaning of such objects. The warmth they attempt, so different from the fire of the first because.

"Until I get it right," Byleth replies. But what she means is, _until I am satisfied._

Sothis's expression crumbles.

"Forever is a long time to bear a grudge," she replies, the certainty in her voice like a blunt weapon. Byleth feels nauseous with its impact.

"I suppose you'd know better than anyone," Byleth says back, and goes on dressing herself. She doesn't notice when Sothis leaves, but she does not return when the day is over and the candles have melted themselves into nothings.

* * *

In the darkness of the underground, Flayn stirs from her sleep like a princess in a fairy tale. Byleth steps past her, watching the button nose of the girl lying next to her, the pretty youth carved so beautifully in that mask. She wonders what they did to the real girl, if she died painlessly, if this is her in all aspects but her will, or if even that was corrupted and this body is the original.

She finds that she doesn't much care.

"That's – that's Monica von—" Ferdinand starts, as Byleth kneels beside the girl.

The silence of her students hangs in the air like a ghost when Kronya's eyes open far too soon, far too quick, Byleth's thumb pressing into her throat like a lover's grip.

"Huh?" her father's killer mumbles, and whatever she sees in Byleth's eyes it's enough to make her whole body stiffen, her hands darting out to help her crawl back and away from Byleth.

"Do you remember me, Kronya?" Byleth asks, and squeezes her close, until their breaths touch.

Kronya's eyes are as wide and as white as dinner plates. Her good, violent humor has been swallowed up by Byleth's quiet fury, but it is not enough to sate Byleth's vicious appetite. It will _never_ be enough.

" _Professor_ ," Petra calls, horrified like the rest of her housemates.

"Do you remember my father?" Byleth whispers, and crushes Kronya's larynx like a wad of crinkly paper.

Bernadetta faints when the blood blossoms and froths at the corner of Kronya's open mouth, a scream cut short by the force of Byleth's hand. Edelgard pulls Byleth away from Kronya's writhing limbs as she reaches for her chest, how it rises and falls in urgency, how her skin goes pale and the mask begins to dampen, then disappear. It drips like black tears, staining the white collar of her stolen uniform.

"Oh!" Dorothea gasps, eyebrows turning in anguished surprise.

If Kronya could speak, what would she say? For a fleeting moment, Byleth considers going back to see, to know. Then Edelgard's hands wrap around Byleth's shoulders, and Byleth notices how Hubert and Ferdinand stand at nervous attention, at-the-ready. Hubert is expected, but Ferdinand is a surprise, and it's weird to think even her beloved students will draw limits for her when they never did so in relation to Edelgard.

"Professor," Edelgard says, like iron, "that's enough."

Kronya's breath is a wheezing thing, all effort, and her eyes are wild, searching for aid that won't come. It is far too soon for Solon to come crawling out of the woodwork, and he won't risk anything for a puppet he would've killed anyway.

It's tragic, when she thinks of it. Byleth rises to her feet, shrugs Edelgard's hands away, and sets her hand on the hilt of her sword.

"Black Eagles," she lectures, hoping that her students pay closer attention than during her classes, "you know what we must do to enemies on the field."

No one replies. Caspar looks up from where he and Linhardt cradle Bernadetta's unconscious body, his face white and at a loss. Petra's expression is hard, a contrast against Dorothea's, who hides her horror behind her hands. Hubert and Ferdinand are statues, and Edelgard looks shocked that her teacher would cast her aside so easily.

If only she knew.

"We neutralize them before they can cause injury to our forces," Byleth explains, and does so.

Kronya's call for help sounds like the garbled ravings of a dying frog. In retrospect, it feels less satisfying than Byleth had dreamed of.

* * *

Byleth wakes up in that dark place again.

"No," she says, and Sothis looks upon her with pity.

"My friend," the goddess says, "you should have learned, the first time you attempted to stop fate."

The surrounding mist encroaches, darkening. It feels almost exactly like—

Byleth draws her sword and forces that fog out through sheer force of will, until her blood is rushing, until her hair is growing paler, greener against her cheek, until her body gives up and she is spilling her lunch on the dusty stone floor.

"I said _no,_ " Byleth repeats, less to Sothis, more to the prison throne-room they always find themselves in. Why should a limbo have a choice in what deserves to exist? Fate is what you make of it, isn't it? Byleth's skin alights with her fury, and Sothis's fades until it is nearly transparent.

"Is this your choice?" she asks, sounding faraway.

Such misery, that Byleth can't become a goddess without killing the one who came before. Such misery, that her infinite years and her solitude and, ultimately, her _kindness_ have weakened Sothis into allowing it.

"Yes," Byleth says, and draws her sword again. "Just this once."

Later, she will realize her face is wet. Later, when they bring Kronya's corpse to be dealt with, when the monastery in whole stops to watch her pass in green, when she has to step over whispers and gasps.

Rhea's greeting smile could cut through bone, but Edelgard's evaluating silence stabs deeper.

* * *

That night, she sleeps in father's quarters, both of them passed out drunk on his trafficked mead and her dining-hall wine. The questions in Jeralt's eyes remain unasked, but he celebrates with her anyway, calling up their band up to his office after-hours.

Three and a half mugs in, Byleth forgets she is in Garreg Mach, surrounded by familiar faces and familiar debauchery, it's almost like the end of a successful campaign. Then her eyes catch onto the colored glass windows, that pretty blue blackened by the night sky outside, and she realizes: she wishes she'd never set foot in this place. She wishes she had never met Edelgard.

Jeralt catches her eyes, his mug knocking into hers like a shoulder-shrug.

"Hey," he says, smirking. "Still a lightweight, I see."

Byleth cocks her head at him, and holds his gaze.

"Y'know, kid," he goes on, and ruffles her hair, "that color looks surprisingly good on you. Your mother, she," he stops to chuckle, then leans back on his chair, "your mother would be glad you got something from her, even if it's a bit later than expected."

She doesn't know what to reply to that. She drinks, instead, and wonders how many new things her father will tell her now that she's bought him the time to do so. And all it took was a goddess, sacrificed, and Edelgard's hard-won trust.

She would do it all over again, or maybe, in the end, she will.

* * *

The Battle of the Eagle and the Lion finishes before the sun has set. After all Byleth has seen and done, it feels like an insult to stand there and play at war, especially considering what the Empire plans. She debates, before, whether she should stand witness alongside Hanneman and Manuela.

"We're counting on you," Edelgard said, her gaze piercing and so sure, and Byleth crumbled.

Now it is over, so many students play-felled by her hand, and it will happen for real in time.

"You're kinda scary, y'know," Claude says, and he is a good actor, so his face doesn't show an inkling of the amazed fear everyone struggles to hide from Byleth nowadays.

"Nonsense," Edelgard says, and her shoulder brushes Byleth's as she steps forward in triumph. Orange clouds curve around the hills like a saint's halo, and she looks warm to the touch, like molten iron. "Our teacher is nothing short of impressive."

Despite everything, Edelgard seems to have erased the underground's gruesome incident from her memory. It seems personal threat is one step too far, but the removal of a pawn off a far too crowded board, no matter how unhinged, can be rationalized.

Maybe it's wishful thinking. Maybe they will attempt to do the same to her. But Hubert does not ask how Byleth knew Kronya, and Edelgard's interest is still too obvious in her face, her blood, and Byleth no longer minds taking risks. It is arguably easier when time bends to her hand, and when her conscience is finally alone.

"We never argued the contrary," Dimitri says, eyeing Byleth with a guarded frown. His voice lowers petulantly. "I daresay no one in their right mind would."

Byleth holds his gaze, and Dimitri looks away first. Claude's smile is a bow's string drawn taut, all those pearly whites like nocked arrows. If he were honest, what would he tell them, and how much would it hurt?

"Thank you," Byleth tells Edelgard.

"Of course, my teacher," Edelgard says, ablaze in triumph in the setting sun, like she already expects the rest of her ambitions to go as smoothly.

But Byleth has seen what those ambitions will do. No matter how honorable their foundations are, no matter how well Edelgard has convinced herself, they will soon be soaked in the blood of the innocents, and Byleth has had enough of death.

* * *

Eventually, it comes.

"Come with me," Edelgard says, and she is so young, still. Her voice echoes in the mausoleum like a lost child's. "Come with me, my teacher."

Maybe this is it. Byleth glances at Rhea, whitely livid, and unsheathes her sword into Edelgard's neck. Hubert trips out of the air, his magic shaking alongside his hands as he grasps at his empress's arms, and neither of them can believe it. Rhea's smile is haunting.

* * *

Byleth wakes up in that dark place again, alone, and she feels sick with her relief.

The surrounding mist encroaches, darkening. It feels almost exactly like going to sleep.

* * *

"Come with me," Edelgard says, and she is so young, still. Her voice echoes in the mausoleum like a lost child's. "Come with me, my teacher."

The first time, Byleth vacillated. Rhea's anger, Edelgard's flippancy, Sothis's silence. She thought she was choosing the least hurtful option. She thought she was choosing peace. But it amounted to nothing, in the end, just fire and ruin and a very expensive imperial victory.

What will her father think? He does not know what the alternative is, was. Will he understand, or will his eyes brighten with derision?

"Very well," Byleth says, and takes her hand.

Edelgard's grip feels like holding a weapon, and nothing is the same after that.

* * *

In the end, Byleth falls under Rhea's earth-shattering anger, and this time no one can will away the passage of time. Five years, a blink of her eyes, and she is surrounded by the pieces of human life: a village's remains, abandoned fields, and Garreg Mach, an occupied husk.

Her father is not here, because why would he, and that is such a hurtful miscalculation that it leaves her unsteady. Maybe he will live on, somewhere else, and maybe he will never hear of the atrocities Byleth will commit in the name of liberty.

But Edelgard looks beautiful, the same kind of hideous beauty of war and death, the same kind of beauty that only cowards look away from. Most of her students avert their gazes occasionally, though Hubert never does, and Byleth finds that she, too, cannot.

Her grip is as firm as ever, and Byleth's hands ache with the strain it takes not to find out if the rest of her is, too. War has emboldened her, or at least given her the appearance of being greater than the lives crushed under her heel. Like it's a worthy trade.

Byleth would be a hypocrite to say it is not. Her own blade is rusted with years-old blood, all of it the reward of her own path of revenge. Edelgard's axes are better kept, oiled and handled by lesser hands, and her end goal is more honorable than Byleth's, or at least it is being spun as such.

It is a shame she will never see its thread wound. It is a shame Byleth cannot forgive her for events un-happened. Swords, even rusted, cut as well as scissors when you apply enough force.

* * *

The days bleed into weeks, just as people do, entire armies and battalions that Byleth can no longer distinguish, or bring herself into wanting to, because what if she has to do it all again?

It would be easy to single out one of her former students: Claude's easy, fabricated smiles, or Annette's enthusiasm, or Ashe's kindness, or Cyril's stubbornness, or Hilda's glibness, or anyone else who dies under her watchful gaze. It would be so easy to let that grief consume her, it would be so easy to run.

They all hurt in equal measures, Byleth finds. She is glad that her father has seemingly moved on, onto other lands, into other missions. She is glad she will never have to face his disappointment in battle, or be forced to learn which decision she would make while doing so.

* * *

They march into the north and Byleth realizes that circumstances are what make a person, when Rhea orders thousands of lives lost in exchange for the paltry possibility of just one more try, just one more day of revenge. For a second, Byleth realizes Edelgard, for all her flaws, is more deserving of Byleth's support than Rhea will ever be.

But then, Byleth would be a hypocrite.

The scale in Rhea's hand might tip more than Byleth's, all those bodies burning in the streets, but Byleth's exhausted from carrying her own sins. She wishes she didn't understand exactly what Rhea is thinking; she wishes she hadn't been thinking it since the first because.

She dies as soon as Rhea's huge, twice-lidded eyes roll to find her. Again, when her ankle rolls and bends, and Rhea's claw pins her against the stone. Jeritza's lance, at least, was just one. Then again, when a lash of her tail sends her flying down the castle yard's stairways, and Byleth barely feels it, her death. But that empty throne room darkens more with each attempt.

Her battalion wastes away under a shouting breath of flame, but it's enough of a distraction that Byleth throws herself from the walls and stabs through the massive flat plane of Rhea's head. Scales break under the skeletal blade of the Creator, and Byleth's body burns and burns with the effort to keep it there.

Byleth remembers Rhea's thin smiles and the way her bedroom smelled, and all the things that went unsaid between the two of them. Byleth remembers the ancient anger on Rhea's face once Byleth's betrayal was unveiled, and wonders whether her own face will look like that, one day.

"Maybe in another life," she whispers, under Rhea's dying roar, and her hand feels cold against the warm, smooth scales of Rhea's forehead. "Maybe in another life, but not in this one."

Later, the surviving troops will find Hubert and Ferdinand's bodies under a collapsed house; a blue-lipped Bernadetta huddling under ash and stone, looking more peaceful than she ever did in life; Caspar at the feet of a decimated automaton, Lindhardt lying close behind. They won't find Dorothea and Petra, and maybe they will hope for something, feeling foolish for thinking of a wyvern's wings, a twice-heavy saddle.

Now, Edelgard stands there, breathing hard, and her shock makes her look like a fool. Like a human. Then she breathes in through her mouth, a staccato of gasps, and the imperial mask sets in again.

"We will have to bring their bodies back," Edelgard says, alone in the middle of a dying city. Blood drips from the gash of her eyebrow, her right eye half-swollen and shut, and she looked far more untouchable on the first because. Byleth wonders how she looks, all covered in cinder and sweat, and decides not to judge.

The air is thick with heat and dust, and there are still entire districts ablaze despite the stone walls. Fhirdhiad will never recover. Whether Fódlan will is still a question Byleth doesn't know how to answer.

"I must write home," Edelgard goes on, and now her voice shakes, delirious with their victory, "and rally our troops to return—"

Byleth grabs her hands, grounding her. The flush on Edelgard's face shows even under the grime, and she really is a beautiful woman. How would this have worked, if Byleth had not been consumed with vengeful grief?

There is much honor in liberation. If Edelgard's future had not been stolen from her, if they had more time, perhaps change could have been incremented. Perhaps war would have never broken out. Perhaps togetherness would have forged a better way. Perhaps if Byleth was capable of forgiveness.

"My teacher?" Edelgard asks, after the silence elongates. In the distance, voices cry out, and buildings crash to the ground like orchestra drums.

"Maybe in another life," Byleth murmurs, repetition like a prayer, and leans into Edelgard.

She is as warm as Byleth had imagined, feverish with delight and adrenaline, her gloved hands grasping at Byleth's neck and pulling closer. Edelgard's trust in her is dizzying, and it is her downfall, as Byleth's dagger slides in and across, and someone, somewhere, could spin it as almost sensuous. Dorothea, maybe, starring in a tragedy like she always said she would do. Byleth imagines a spotlight, an embrace, and the silence before the applause.

And it is beautiful.

"Ah," Edelgard gasps, and her kiss tastes of copper, of fine imperial blood, of an ending. Byleth swallows it all even as she starves, because it will never be enough, never, _never_. "Ah," she gasps, and pulls back to watch Byleth.

Byleth has to give herself some credit: she feels as distraught as Edelgard looks. Does it show on her face? From the way Edelgard smiles, it must.

She asks, still holding onto Byleth's shoulders: "So, my teacher," she manages, as the blood pools at their feet, as the smell of her floods. No longer light and fruity and airy, but thick and cloying like death. Heat rises around them, consuming the thin skin of Rhea's wings, eating away with bright tangerine bites. Edelgard's expression is clear with realization. "Was it always going to end like this?"

"I don't know," Byleth murmurs, sparing her, hand grasping Edelgard's wetly, a dancer's pose.

A lie is the most generous act Byleth can afford. After all she's already spent, there is nothing left.

Edelgard dies smiling, eyes damp with her disappointed laughter. The ash falls like rain as the fire beckons closer like a titillated lover, and Byleth could stand and run as far her body would allow. But she is so tired, and the world is almost as cruel as she has been.

The delirious fire encroaches, beckoning. It feels almost exactly like going to sleep.


End file.
